


i pay attention

by slurpmind



Category: Charlie's Angels (2019)
Genre: F/F, not mature..... yet, un-beta'd or whatever so lmk if there's a typo :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26348839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slurpmind/pseuds/slurpmind
Summary: Elena doesn't know it's love right away, but she knows it's something pretty much immediately.
Relationships: Elena Houghlin/Sabina Wilson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 76





	1. Chapter 1

The first call from Sabina came a week after she got to California. It was a brief conversation initially, a _How ya doin?_ kind of thing, that left Elena with a bewildered smile on her face. In the first free evening she’d had in a week, where she actually had the time to idly read Townsend Agency Rulebooks in her bedroom, she didn’t expect to get a call. They’d all had about a week off before she went to California- but as far as she knew Jane and Sabina were at it again already.

Jane hadn’t been available- off coordinating a permanent partnership between the Townsend Agency and the new Women’s Clinic in Istanbul- and while Bosley had told her she was available for help, given Elena’s unconventional recruitment, she was off to Paris on recon for Jane and Sabina’s next assignment- a much shorter and sweeter one, she hoped.

“Won’t it be kind of suspicious that I have a Bosley helping me through this training? I don’t want any of the other recruits getting the wrong idea,” Elena asks on that first phone call, still questioning her place here and if the three of them are just offering their help because of some juvenile sense of obligation.

“Elena. As if two Angels on speed-dial is any less sus’, like c’mon.” Sabina laughs, the crack of it ringing through her phone speaker, and Elena feels herself soothed by it.

When they hang up, after laughing through the introduction of the handbook Elena was studying, it turns out to be two hours later. She hadn’t even realized that much time had gone by. Her roommate had come in and out of the room, sure, but that was really Elena’s only clue that she’d been laying with the book on her lap and a smile on her face for that long, talking to Sabina.

She doesn’t give it another thought that night, but still feels inexplicably giddy when she picks up her book to continue reading on her own.

It becomes regular after that. She calls all three of them, to be sure, for help and just to talk, but it’s Sabina she ends up on the phone with the most. Sabina calls her, too, when she’s stayed up til 3 coming back from a party or out on assignment in a time zone that isn’t 9 hours ahead of Elena.

It becomes every mission- a call estimating how Elena could use this scenario in her training, messages and voicemails whenever she proves Jane wrong, and always a video when they get back. Elena begins bringing her phone to the gym, the library, wherever she is in the compound.

She’s never spoken with someone on the phone this much- but she kind of loves it. If she hadn’t been soaked and sick to her stomach when she and Sabina had exchanged their first words, and then immediately thrown into a whirlwind of a week, Elena can guess they probably would have talked more like this.

Maybe it’s that that makes her nervous the first time Sabina asks if they can do a video call. She mentions some bruising from earlier that day, when she’d landed hard on her side and says it’s the “worst bruise she’s ever had”. The Angel on the other side of the line bets it could be worse.

“Damn, fine, I’ll prove to you that I’m not just being a baby,” she replies, throwing her free hand up in mock disdain, leaping off her chair to the mirror in her room. Despite her stomach flipping, Elena switches the call to video and flips to front camera, showing her leg bruise down to her knee from where it appears under her shorts.

Her face isn’t in the camera, which is tilted down to just show the edge of her shorts and bright yellow sleep shirt, so she takes a second to look at Sabina. The other girl is on her screen, looking at her bruise as if inspecting it, with a furrowed brow and her hair grown out more than when she’d last seen her. It takes her aback, the hair falling in her face, the hand running through it.

Sabina brings a fist to her mouth, as if recoiling at the sight of her bruise, and says, “Yeah, alright”.

And Elena feels stupid, for a second. She was looking at eyeliner and eyebrows and wondering wow, were her eyes always that green? when Sabina spoke, so she had to recover.

“What?” Smooth, Houghlin.

“I was just saying that that is really gnarly. Definitely the gnarliest bruise, you were right.”

Elena laughs, bows in the mirror, and thanks her.

“I feel obligated to tell you to put ice on it, on behalf of Saint.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Just wanted to keep my battle mark for a little longer. To show I’m one of you guys.” She brings Sabina up to eye level now, switching the camera around to look at her. She drifts back from the mirror, bare feet squeaking on the wood floor of her bedroom.

“Wow,” is all Sabina says, after a moment, when the camera flips around and they can look eye to eye, more or less, for the first time in weeks.

“What?,” Elena panics, stops her ambling backwards and hoping the concern doesn’t show on her face.

“Bos was wrong. Yellow does work for you.”

“Oh.” Not what she expected, but she’ll definitely take it. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, I mean, it looks good.” Sabina’s face dips from the frame, and for a moment she can just see the blonde’s hand run through her hair, hear her clearing her throat, before her eyes return to the screen with, “You look good.”

And before Elena can process the dip in the other girls voice she continues,  
“Like a firefly. Only- not a bug. Cute, and not buggy.”

“Cute, huh?” She counters with a disapproving tone in her voice, watching the other girl’s eyebrows scrunch and her mouth form into a smirk. Her mouth turns up to meet it, much as she tries to look stern.

“Yeah, okay... how about sexy? You want smart and sexy to be your thing, got it.”

They both laugh at that. Elena covers her face with her hand as she walks back to her desk, not looking away from her screen. Her cheeks flush and she’s aware now more than ever that they haven’t seen each other in person for a month. They’re only about a half-hour helicopter ride away from each other right now, Sabina and Jane staying at the Los Angeles outpost with her across town, but the burn in her chest makes her feel so far from them. It’s the closest to family she’s had in a really long time.

Elena sits back on her bed, and her heart kicks up as she sinks into the blankets. The blonde gives her a wink, and she decides to always video call from then on.


	2. Chapter 2

In the last week of her training, after two days of Sabina and Jane being on assignment with minimal communication, Elena gets a call when she’s just gotten back to her room.

Her roommate Hailee is just on her way out, so she leans in for a high-five before she sees Elena practically diving for her phone on the dresser. She backs up and makes a face of mock-surprise when she sees it’s the same contact as her usual calls.

She gets along with her roommate really well. They eat dinner together, swap recruitment stories- apparently getting brought on from civilian liability to Angel recruit is as rare as Elena thought- whenever Hailee isn’t busy thirsting over the girl in her driving session who used to be an Olympic gymnast. Elena hasn’t told Hailee that today is her birthday - she hasn’t told anyone. But that’s mostly because she hasn’t had the time to think of it, really.

Last year she’d been locked up at Brok, testing and re-testing Calisto- and the year before she’d been on a three-day coding bender. Even before then, she had gotten used to minimal celebration.

She sticks out her tongue when Hailee gives her a salute goodbye, about to leave the room. She’ll tell her later.

“Have fun with Aly. Tell me if you can pick your jaw off the ground when you watch her shift gears today.”

“Hey, that is out of line,” Hailee replies, only half-heartedly defending herself, “You’re the one in love with the Angel who recruited you.”

“She didn’t  _ recruit _ me,”  _ True,  _ her brain says. “And I’m not in love with her!”  _ Not true? Whatever. Girls call each other sexy all the time, right? No, okay, that’s definitely flirting. _

“I mean, you’re all, like, crinkly and excited, and it feels much warmer in this hallway than before. But okay.”

“‘Lenaaa! Firefly! You picked up!” Sabina’s voice interrupts their banter, cutting through what sounds like reverb and tinny bass. Elena signals at Hailee to get a move on. 

She has to pause at the door after processing Sabina’s greeting. She has never been one for pet names but she finds herself mouthing  _ oh my god?  _ with her eyes closed at being called  _ firefly _ by her new friend who she’s decided she absolutely has a crush on.  _ She made that up weeks ago! _ She hears Hailee laughing as she disappears down the hall.

“Hey, yeah, I finished diffusing the after-dinner bomb before anyone else so, I got an early dinner and extra study time.” Elena checks the time: 6PM, which means it’s 2AM where her caller is right now. “You’re finished taking down that arms dealer in Lisbon already?”

“Oh, pshhhht, yeah, yeah. Locked him up  _ a prisão _ a few hours ago! I took Janey out for drinks.” 

Sabina slurs her Portuguese, a language she described as “already slurred anyways”, but somehow drags her English words even more. Elena smiles again as she crosses the room.

“Janey? Our Jane? Drinking?”

“Well, she’s behaved very moderately, only had one drink, but who knew the girl could dance like that?  _ Wooooo, damn _ .” The music swells, and for a minute Elena can’t hear her at all. She sits on her bed and hears a clatter, thinks the other girl’s dropped her phone or something, before a great swooping sound cuts through the buzz and she hears Sabina’s voice again, clearly.

“Hey, yeah, sorry. Bathroom,” she cuts in, sounding like she just ran off the dancefloor.

“How’s the club?” 

“Hot and loud,” she says, voice still hazy, making Elena’s heart skip, “Just what I needed, I think. I actually called specifically to ask, have you gotten any mail today?”

Elena falls back into her pillows. “No?,” She replies.

“You do have a mail service there. Just to clarify. It’s top secret and all that, of course, but it works.”

Elena is about to open her mouth to respond, but she pauses when she hears steps coming back up the hallway.

A muttering sounds echoes down the hall, and she registers it as her roommate right before Hailee shouts “ _ ELENA HOUGHLIN IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY” _ in a sing-song voice. The sound swims into the room with a metallic ring, and Hailee follows suit carrying a cake with burning candles on a tray. She’s flanked by a few other girls from their dorm, and they all start singing the birthday song. Sabina hears, laughs, and joins in over the phone, and she can hear Jane, too. She switches to video to see them, laughing outside of a nightclub in Portugal.

She wants to say  _ How? _ or  _ Why? _ , but instead she listens to her friends singing for her birthday and thinks:  _ You know why. _

Jane blows a kiss and says “Happy birthday, love. Did you really think we wouldn’t know?”

Hailee, Aly, and the others give her a round of applause when she blows her candles out. 

“There’s a gift too, Elena,” Hailee says, and hands her a little velvet-covered ring box, blue embossed with the Angel wings she’ll soon get to claim.

Elena picks up the box with thumb and pointer finger, almost visibly nervous. 

“We thought if we had to be across the world on your birthday, you should at least get a present.”

She opens the box and takes the slim, silver and gold metal in her hands. “A key?”

“Yeah, I mean, there’s still  _ hella _ security measures and you don’t actually need the physical key, but Jane and I both wanted you to have it anyway. For our place.”

_ Our place. _

So that answers some of her questions.

**Author's Note:**

> been thinking about this movie for a minute- working on more of this.  
> sabina is a scorpio with a pisces stellium and i think elena is a gemini :) 
> 
> if you saw this and you know me irl no u didn't and no u don't


End file.
